Reuters is reporting that the celebrated Turkish novelist and Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk is to stand for trial the second time for his remarks about the massacres of the Armenians in Turkey at the turn of the twentieth century.

Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s Nobel Prize-winning author, said he may face
new compensation claims for remarks he made about the World War One-era
killing of Armenians, despite an earlier acquittal in a criminal trial,
the Anatolian news ageny said on Saturday.

Turkey’s Court of Appeals this week overturned a lower court
decision that had dismissed the claims of personal damages against
Pamuk, 56, paving the way for a new case. LINK

And what has the Armenian diplomacy done? Can’t even form a public perception about Karabakh.

The election of five new non-permanent members to the United
Nations Security Council sent starkly different messages to two
neighboring Muslim nations in the Middle East.

Turkey, which last held a UNSC seat in 1961 and lobbied hard in the
months leading up to the election, secured 151 votes from the
192-member U.N. General Assembly, easily defeating its competition.
Iran, meanwhile, saw its hopes of holding a seat for the first time
since 1956 crushed, garnering just 32 votes in its bid for the Asian
seat against Japan, the U.N.’s second largest donor.

The results come as no surprise. While Turkey has been actively engaged
in settling regional disputes, Iran has fought U.N. sanctions over its
disputed nuclear program. Its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has
antagonized Israel, and is known for his repeated controversial remarks
about zionism, America and the Security Council’s overall effectiveness.

Turkish leaders hailed the victory as a reflection of their increasing
role in world affairs and vowed to use the seat to address issues in
the Caucasus, Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan.(FULL ARTICLE)

A Swiss district court has found three Turkish
defendants guilty of denying the Armenian holocaust during the Ottoman
Empire 90 years ago.

They were ordered to pay up to
SFr6,500 ($5,630) each for violating Swiss anti-racism legislation, but
part of the fine was suspended over three years according to a
statement by the Winterthur court on Tuesday.

In a recent paper, economists Oeindrila Dube and Juan Vargas
use data on Colombia’s decades-old civil war to show that the stakes
may be much higher for resource-dependent economies, where the ups and
downs of commodity markets can literally mean the difference between
war and peace.

How are commodities prices connected to civil
strife? Poor farmers impoverished by lower crop prices may be eager
recruits for rebel groups who can promise a better livelihood from
stolen loot than what the soil can provide (not to mention protection
from pillaging, since unaligned farmers may be easy prey for either
rebels or government troops). A cheaper cup of joe may thus translate
into conflict in the coffee-growing world. (It has, in fact, been suggested
that the mass murder in 1994 of perhaps 1 million Tutsis in Rwanda was
triggered by the 50 percent fall in the price of Arabica beans, the
economic lifeblood of Rwanda’s poor farmers.) (ARTICLE)

Via Blogian. I just discovered some cartoons depicting the cowardly murderer Ramil Safarov who murdered his Armenian counterpart while the latter was asleep and decapitated him. The two were attending a NATO organized language training school in Budapest. I have no idea what the accompanying article says, since I am not a Hungarian (any out there who can transalate this for me I would greatly appreciate) but the cartoons (and again cartoons, what the hades is happening to this world, cartoons are taking over the world) tell it all. For more info on the heinous murder here.